AI Innovation, Customer Trust, and Startup Strategy with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and I talk about creating flywheel effects through customer obsession, the landscape of AI startups and what's real and what's not, and why workers don't trust AI. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating Innovations with Impact. Let's get started.

Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

Startup Ecosystem Building, Travel, and Early Observations

[00:00:45] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me, I have a co-host Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn.

[00:00:50] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to see you, Brian. 

[00:00:52] Brian Ardinger: Great to see you. Both you and I have been on the road quite a bit for the last couple weeks, so it's nice to actually say hello again and get back into the swing of things.

I spent last week in Savannah, Georgia, talking about startup ecosystem building with the Savannah Harbor Innovation Partnership. And they're looking for new ways to spice up and kickstart a lot of the startup activity there. So it was quite interesting. As an innovator, I think it's always important to get out to other communities and see what's going on and share war stories and best practices and all that kind of fun stuff. So, it was fun to get out there.

I give a shout out to what they're trying to do, trying to get the right people across all parts of their ecosystem together, whether it's founders or investors, university, and things along those lines. I think they're doing a good job of trying to kickstart a lot of stuff going on down there. I'm excited to see where they go to. 

[00:01:41] Robyn Bolton: Savannah is home to one of my favorite innovations, the Savannah Bananas. But yes, I was on the road too. I went a little further afield. I was in London for the Thinkers 50 Conference, which as you would imagine was extremely interesting, especially these days where everything is so volatile and uncertain everywhere across the globe.

Thinkers 50 Takeaways and Early Reflections on Uncertainty

And there was a lot of discussion around how now more than ever, is a time for courage and to be brave. There was a lot of discussion around what the future holds and several brave souls who just said, we don't know. It could be anything. One of my favorites was Daniel Pink. He said, basically, we're living in the era of Schrödinger's cat, that the future will be radically different and the same.

All at the same time. And I'm like, okay, that sounds totally fair. So lots of really interesting ideas. Lots to think about, as you would expect from a conference's called Thinkers 50. Fascinating, fascinating conversations. 

[00:02:47] Brian Ardinger: Now we're going to open the box and what do we find when, when it's opened? The box is already open. You know, we're going down that path no matter what. And you know, it is kind of interesting. You, you're seeing a lot more bubble talk and things like that, but yet yesterday Nvidia had their quarterly announcements and $5 trillion valuation and blew out their estimates.

And so it's like, well, it's not a bubble yet, or people are at least spending money NVIDIA's getting paid for this stuff. So, we'll, we'll see where it all shakes out. 

[00:03:12] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. Even if it's a bubble, I mean, we had an internet bubble back in the early part of the century and it didn't mean the internet went away. It just means we resorted ourselves. So even if AI is a bubble, I don't think it's going away.

The Flywheel Effect, Customer Obsession, and Human-Centered Touchpoints

[00:03:26] Brian Ardinger: Got three articles to talk about today. First one's called the Flywheel Effect: How Customer Obsession Creates Self-Reinforcing Advantages. This is from Wildfire Labs. They've been putting out some great content. The Flying Wheel Effect talks about building a startup isn't about growth hacking. It's really about how do you create customer experiences and these flywheels that generate self-reinforcing momentum because there's so many things out there taking aways attention and competing for dollars and mindset.

So how do you build into your process different ways that you can create a flywheel to differentiate and build it up? So, one of the examples they talk about is chewy.com and how Chewy built into their experience the idea of when a person's pet passes away, they actually sent them flowers. And created an experience and a touchpoint as part of that to relate to their customers but also create a means for further conversations. And, you know, creating a positive experience with that brand and with that company. 

[00:04:27] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, I think it's so interesting and this idea of flywheel, it's one of the things mentioned in the article is the first step is creating an exceptional experience that creates emotional impact.

Rising Customer Acquisition Costs and the Decline of Consumer Trust

And you just think of our world right now, which is focused on cost cutting and on driving waste out of the system and on AI. The first step of creating this flywheel and this incredible loyalty and retention and word of mouth is so very human.

You know, I think more and more we're going to start seeing that the more human you can be, you know, a handwritten card, sending flowers. That's something probably you could get AI to do, but it's a very human thing to acknowledge the grief that comes with the loss of a pet.

The more human businesses can be, especially at key moments, that's where they're going to win. That's where they're going to differentiate themselves, in a world that is increasingly kind of more robotic and lean. 

[00:05:27] Brian Ardinger: The ironic thing is, startups have the exact same tools to create and reach customers as in the past. So it's being commoditized, the ability to actually grab a customer and have that first interaction.

But the cost of customer acquisition, I think some of the statistics they had in the article talked about what costs, you know, a hundred dollars in 2019 now costs $160. You know, a startup that spends 61% of their new capital on customer acquisition up from 28% in 2018. So those are massive jumps and it's hard to make a business model work if you have that much to acquire the brand new customer and you can't keep them from churning or going somewhere else.

Community Building, Trust Signals, and Real Startup Differentiation

And the other things, the idea of trust and how consumer brands are, the ability to trust brands is going down 73%, I think they said reported increased skepticism toward marketing claims, and that makes sense that you're seeing a lot of AI slop and a lot of things. Who do you trust anymore?

And then finally, this idea of how do you build a community around your company, not just a product or service, word of mouth being so important. 78% of successful seed stage companies ...